A stranger with a silver cross brings salvation—or strangulation. Who saves the savior?
When a luminous stranger arrives on the farm, Stella’s father stays sober and her mother begins to laugh again. But the man with the silver cross has not come to save them. as jerry slithers his way into their hearts, his own dark wounds begin to show. stella must shut up and watch him strangle her family or use the truth to fight for their lives.
Acting
Barnard's silent terror is devastating.
Direction
Rickards weaponizes rural isolation brilliantly.
Writing
Jerry's charm curdles so gradually you don't notice the trap.
Director
Meg Rickards
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Shot in South Africa's Western Cape, the film uses Afrikaans farm culture—deeply religious, isolated, stoic—to create a pressure cooker where outsiders are simultaneously suspect and desperately welcomed.
The title's biblical echo is deliberate: Jerry as serpent, Stella as forbidden-knowledge Eve, the farm as Eden that was never innocent to begin with.
ZA
